


the year he was going to die

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Existential Crisis, Immediately Post-TRK, Light Dom/sub, M/M, angst porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 16:07:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13368291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: One week since his second death, and Gansey doesn’t think he’s slept for more than an hour solid.





	the year he was going to die

**Author's Note:**

> haha it's been awhile! Here's a bunch of post-TRK Ronsey feels largely inspired by [this post](http://nsfw0lf.tumblr.com/post/169535716856/how-do-i-stop-thinking-about-gansey-breaking-down). 
> 
> Thanks as usual to my [lovely wife](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) for beta-reading

Four in the morning at Monmouth is no longer familiar. The space around Gansey stretches out and out while the ceiling presses in. The maps on the wall all lead to places he’s been, every treasure cluttering the floor reduced from ‘clue’ to ‘relic’. He hasn’t written in his journal for a week, and something about the over-stuffed shape of it sitting on his desk gives him an empty feeling. It’s like walking into his room at his parent’s house, stepping into a space he’s outgrown.

But he had always itched to leave the Gansey home; this was a dream he hadn’t expected to outlive.

One week since his second death, and Gansey doesn’t think he’s slept for more than an hour solid. He is no stranger to insomnia, but Monmouth used to be a comfort. Now he is surrounded by the thoughts and longings of a person who isn’t quite him anymore, and he shifts uncomfortably in his skin. The walls wait. The night is stopped, and it feels like a promise, that even if Gansey gets through this one, there will soon be another.

Noah’s room is a black hole. Gansey tries to keep his eyes off that gaping doorway, but a part of him welcomes the sick ache that it inspires in him. He feels, fundamentally, that he failed. How much could he have helped a ghost? How hard had he actually tried? His efforts feel ephemeral. He touches his head, his chest, rubs his fingertips, tries to feel any of _Noah_ in him, or Cabeswater, or any of the magic that he had apparently been taking for granted. There is never anything. Noah has not yet reappeared in his doorway, but Gansey doesn’t stop looking.  

Without Glendower Gansey is staring down time that he honestly did not expect to be alive for. The school year alone has months left in it. He does not have any particular, articulate purpose. Gansey supposes all he’s meant to do now is _live_ , but for someone who has tasted death, the idea of just sitting out the school year is tepid.

What he’s used to is just taking off when he’s done with a place, disappearing, no worries or goodbyes. Simply him finding his new horizon. And Gansey _knows_ that’s not an option here, not after his friends followed him to the end, but the old habit is itching under his skin, an easy answer to this insomnia, aimlessness, misery. Gansey resists; the traitorous voice in his mind thinks that it would be so easy to just _go._

He knows Ronan can read it on him. The only time Ronan leaves him alone is so they can try and sleep. The result is that instead of sitting up awake and haunted together, they are instead separated by a wall. Otherwise Ronan is _there_ , and Gansey doesn’t ever suggest they make some space because Ronan saw him die and now, almost worse, Ronan can see the temptation to vanish flickering over Gansey’s face.

He’s not actually sure when Ronan comes out of his room. He’s started losing time like that over the last few days; he watches the window, black night, no breeze, scant light, and then Ronan is leaning up against the window frame just in the edge of his view, and Gansey’s startle gives his dissociation away.

Ronan’s eyes are dark from lost sleep. Gansey has caught him napping, just as Gansey has caught him waking, in fits and starts and a sheen of - not even terror, but the place beyond. Acceptance. Loss. It's tempting to hope that Ronan Lynch might be able to stare death down, but it has robbed him of too much too recently. No wonder he looks hollow. No wonder, whenever he wakes up, he immediately searches for Gansey.

Ronan takes a seat on the floor beside Gansey, and once the floorboards have finished settling Monmouth is taut and unmoving around them once again. Gansey wants to ask _bad dreams?_ but doesn’t want to say ‘dream’ to Ronan, who is working so hard to escape them. Who knows what’s in Lynch’s head these days. If he’s as empty as Gansey, Gansey isn’t sure he wants to force it out into vulnerable words, exposed.

Too many ticks of silence, where inane talk could go, but doesn’t. There is absolutely nothing to be said, because there is absolutely nothing left in Gansey worthy of discussion. Eight months left in the school year. College. Work. _Life_ , which he is not ungrateful for, but which he had been so prepared to part from.

Gansey loses a little more untraceable time to the maze of the looming future. He doesn’t know how long the two of them just sit side-by-side until Ronan leans in, pressing his head to Gansey’s chest. He listens to Gansey’s heart beat beat beat and his shoulders shudder, tense and unhappy.

Gansey thinks he should say something assuring, though he doesn’t want to say anything he doesn’t mean, and right now he feels like a stranger to conviction. Gansey thinks that he should tell them both to get some sleep, though neither of them will be able to. There’s nothing to do at four in the morning; even model Henrietta feels pointless, an artefact meant to be left behind by a boy on borrowed time, not just something he _has_. 

Something in Ronan’s coiled shoulders says he’s feeling like an artefact. Ronan knows Gansey intended to leave them – him - behind. Blue had known and Adam had known but Ronan, truest of them all, had been smacked blind by inevitability and betrayal. Guilt roils Gansey's gut, and Noah’s empty door stares at him accusingly. Failures upon failures.

It's an old habit. It's a comfort that Gansey was largely intending to give up, now that they have Blue and Adam, Adam and Blue. But Ronan is crushed against him, his body strung with steel wire and the effort of not shaking, and Gansey curls a hand around Ronan's throat.

The world stills. The world becomes infinitely softer and more giving, now that Gansey has his hands on it, and the world is Ronan whose breath is a sigh in the empty silence of Monmouth, and Gansey whispers, “It's okay.”

“You can't go, man.”

It is the kind of thing that can only been said at four in the morning, too raw, a ragged admission that Ronan cannot stop Gansey from leaving, and that Gansey leaving would be the very worst thing.

Gansey knows he has to mean it before he says it. It’s endlessly hard to find his resolve, but he can feel Ronan’s pulse hammering against his palm, and he manages, “I won't.”

He can't leave Ronan alone in this place, with two dead spaces where his friends should be. Ronan's hand finds Gansey’s wrist and twists needily, a hard pull of skin, and Gansey repeats, “I won't leave you.”

He can't say he won't leave Aglionby or Henrietta, or patch all the holes he'd hoped Glendower would fill, but he can promise that much at least; he knows Ronan did not take him into his heart lightly. Gansey can't betray him, not so soon after the last, can't make Ronan suffer his loss again. It would be about the same as death, if he left now.

Ronan exhales, his breath a delicate thing. He says “yeah”, which means a lot more than ‘yeah’, and does not loosen his grip on Gansey’s arm. The world is still under Gansey’s hands, quiet and malleable.

It feels too late for talking, so Gansey's assurance comes in the best form he has to give; touch and heat and just enough pressure to make them stick. They stay on the floor because every other place in the room is a place where the Gansey that Gansey outgrew did something, made something, hoped something. The only familiar thing is motion, is his fingers gliding over Ronan’s neck, is that imperceptible tilt of Ronan baring his throat to offer access.

“You know you have to hold on for me too,” Gansey says, and either he doesn’t sound as worried as he is or he’s not worried at all. This is not the same Ronan he first collared, even though nights are still restless and his favourite outlet died in a fireball. “We’re both here to stay now.”

Ronan looks at him and it is a _look_ , half-lidded and hungry, preoccupied by the hands on him, not nearly as resentful of existence as he has been. “Not fair, man,” Ronan says, “You made _me_ pledge that I was sticking around, even when you fucking knew…”

“I know,” Gansey prompts, his thumbs stroking the hollows of Ronan’s collarbones.

It only takes a second for Ronan to relent. “We’ll have to figure out all this ‘future’ shit,” he says, and it’s agreement, and Gansey rewards him by tightening the fingers laced around his throat. He’s gotten good at it over their time together; he knows the amount of pressure that says to Ronan _I’m here_ , that makes Ronan’s eyes close and his soul hum, challenged and pleased in just the right ways. Gansey savours his expression, squeezes, relaxes his grip until Ronan’s looking at him again, eyes somewhere closer to mellow.

There’s still distance that needs to be closed. There’s still too much being lost between the lines. Ronan is good at following instructions, and Ronan _trusts_ so absolutely, and Gansey gets him on his back, legs open so he can kneel between them. The walls are coming back in, the ceiling is retreating, and Ronan is looking at Gansey like he believes he can make things better. Gansey would like to believe that, too.

For now he settles for leaning over Ronan, hands either side of his head, always careful, caging Ronan in with his body as best he can. He knows without asking that Ronan won't kiss him anymore, though his lips have never been poisoned by prophecy. Instead he kisses like Blue used to, on Gansey’s hands and neck and barely, barely the corners of his mouth.

Gansey’s hands don’t leave Ronan’s skin. If they’re not brushing over his throat, they’re on his chest, or they’re bruising his hips, or they’re edging under Ronan’s waistband, just to make his breath hitch. They’re being quieter than they need to, but that’s something to work up to; one week without sleep, with everything so heavy in their minds, and they both need this to settle them.

There is a part of Gansey that has been scraped raw, that he suspects might stay raw for as long as he has a heart. But he’s seen Ronan survive, and he’s seen Ronan magnificent, and now he’s pressing Ronan into the uneven floorboards with a hand splayed over his chest, and thinks that he can only hope to do so well himself.

Ronan’s lips part for Gansey’s fingers, as greedy for them as the part that comes after. Sitting up on his knees, basically astride him, Gansey looks down and down to Ronan’s lidded eyes, feels the wet heat of Ronan’s tongue working in between his fingers, thinks that this can make the night pass. “You’re doing well,” he says, words cushioned by shadows, voice as gentle as his hand on Ronan is firm. “Just like that. Good boy.”

Here is the Ronan that only Gansey gets to see; the Ronan with his tongue hanging out when Gansey takes his hand back, the Ronan that’s already panting, who stays still when instructed, who holds his legs open while Gansey gets his pants out of the way, even though his thighs are quivering and his eyes are aching and he _needs_ this. No one else but Gansey gets Ronan so unarmoured, feelings laid bare on his face; there’s no question of what would happen to him if Gansey left.

And Gansey knows he _won’t_ , tells himself, promises himself, pushes a finger up into Ronan to watch the exaltation on his face, and knows it’s impossible to leave this behind. It’s a coping mechanism they were both meant to be outgrowing, but surely, surely right now is a time they need a bit of help to cope.

Ronan’s hand finds Gansey’s wrist, follows the thrust of his fingers, says “You can’t fucking go,” all breath and conviction and agony.

“I told you I won’t,” Gansey says, adds another finger, folds himself over Ronan’s body to kiss his throat, sometimes biting, sometimes sucking until the skin beneath him is red and swollen, marks that can linger. He pushes in up to his knuckles, hears Ronan’s moan reverberate through both their bodies, presses his lips to the edge of Ronan’s jaw and says again, “You’re doing so well.”

He works Ronan open slowly, bleeds the poison out, cracks the shell that’s trapping all the dead air in Ronan’s head. This is what it takes to bring the worst parts of Ronan up to the surface so they can be scalded clean, and this is what they’ve learned together over all their unquiet months. “I have all these fucking dreams,” Ronan says, an admission that he wants to swallow back, an admission that he could never make without Gansey between his knees.

It’s like a confession; Gansey bites and sucks and draws the venom of Ronan’s nightmares out. It is not always particularly sexy. But it’s cleansing, affirming, it’s putting something back in the right shape after it’s been warped by such overwhelming weight.

Ronan says, “You would have left me behind,” and Gansey says, “I’m sorry, so sorry,” and Ronan says, “I don’t _have_ anyone else,” and Gansey hushes him, hand on his shoulder, holding him down when Ronan wants to arc up, fingers crooked up inside him, murmuring assurance whenever a groan cracks too close to a sob.

Voice rough, eyes desperate, Ronan says, “I see you _dead_ when I close my eyes,” and Gansey replies, “I’m here, I’m alive, you can hear my heart beat,” and it shouldn’t be so hard for them, they should have been able to say this in the daylight, but some kind of social education failed them and now they are here, with Gansey three fingers deep in Ronan’s ass and murmuring absolution.

Gansey’s hard, aching, but doesn’t want to take a hand off Ronan to tend to himself; he needs Ronan to feel _handled_ , caught, safe, needs Ronan’s trust in him, needs Ronan’s need to anchor him as much as he’s saving Ronan.

Gansey presses himself beneath Ronan's skin until Ronan can believe that he'll stay there.

He rocks his fingers into Ronan until finally Ronan is lying exhausted and spent beneath him. For a second, Gansey feels upset that anyone else has ever seen Ronan so exalted, the haze in his expression and the come on his stomach, right up to the edge of where his shirt has ridden up. But he kisses Ronan on the jaw, and Ronan wraps an arm around Gansey’s shoulders, and Gansey can feel his thundering heart starting to calm and it’s good. The room around them is small and familiar, their home, his place.

“Let me sort you out,” Ronan says after a beat. There is just enough light in the room for Gansey to see the sweat on his forehead, the willingness in his eyes. He has been properly unwound; he looks, though it’s a bold declaration, relaxed.

Gansey would say no, but Ronan wants to, and Gansey wants to give him what he wants. “Go ahead,” he says, and shifts back, still on the floor, so Ronan can do what he likes.

Gansey has never been handled the way he touches Ronan, so he doesn’t know what it’s like, not really. Ronan’s approach is usually gentle. His mouth is wet and soft and willing, and Gansey leans back on his elbows and lets endless, ticking thought be replaced with indulgence.

He doesn’t think about leaving. He doesn’t think about how he’s going to manage a week, a year, a lifetime. He strokes a hand over Ronan’s head and feels the stubble, then wonders if Ronan will ever let his hair grow out again. He moves his hand down to the base of Ronan’s head instead, where he can’t see the tattoo and doesn’t have to think about a thing.

He comes with his eyes closed in the dark, gripping Ronan too tight, grief churning weirdly through his chest. But he feels better.

They get off the floor together, arms entangled, capable of parting but unwilling. Ronan slumps down on Gansey’s bed, and pulls Gansey with him; he’s planning to sleep, or not, or to just exist nearby. It’s fine however it is. Gansey looks at the ceiling, exhausted, afterglow still tingling through him.

There is a lot of living yet to be done, and he’s going to have an awful lot of time to fill. Gansey thinks briefly of re-joining the Aglionby rowing team, and then feels faintly nauseous. He needs a new quest, a new purpose, a new life. Beside him, Ronan is a warm pile of barely-tamed neuroses, his best friend, important beyond words. Across the room, Noah’s door waits empty.

Gansey knows he needs to make it worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! As usual I'd love to know what you thought and you can hit me up on [tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/)


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